Michael Hiltzik: 2018 was the year of California vs. Trump. 2019 will be even more challenging

If California Attorney General Xavier Becerra thought he would get a respite from fighting the Trump administration as the holiday season approached, a federal judge in Texas disabused him of the notion on Dec. 14.

That was when Judge Reed O’Connor issued his notorious ruling that the entire Affordable Care Act would be invalid as of New Year’s Day, when the penalty for individuals going without health insurance drops to zero. That forced Becerra, who is leading a coalition of 17 mostly blue states defending the law, into a compressed schedule of appeal motions; the coalition filed one brief Dec. 17 and another was due two days after Christmas.

But that’s just one harbinger of the year ahead. In 2018, California filed 44 lawsuits or motions in cases challenging Trump administration policies, Becerra says. “You’ll see that 2019 is a year when we bring a lot of these cases to a head,” he told me. Some will